


After the End of the World

by adastra615



Series: The Sun and Planets [4]
Category: The World's End (2013)
Genre: Aftermath, Gen, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, I always try for that happy somewhat bittersweet ending, Not All Doom and Gloom, Post Movie, Suicide Attempt, maybe this is more hopeful than usual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-26 18:04:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13863027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adastra615/pseuds/adastra615
Summary: Gary and Andy and what's in the future.





	After the End of the World

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: There is a description of a suicide attempt in this.

“Gary, stop scratching,” Andy says.

“Itches,” he says and kicks an empty bottle. It clatters and cracks as it spins across the empty road, his fingers still digging at the bandages around his wrist. His coat sleeve is too tight for him to really reach the part that’s driving him mad.

“When were your supposed to get those out?”

Gary drops his hands to his side and tucks his fingers indignantly into his pockets.  “Any fucking time I want.”

“Stop it. They gave you some sort of instructions. And don’t give me “I’m Gary King, I don’t follow rules run around. I’m not in the mood.” 

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Does too matter.  Just- Jesus, Gary, stop moving.” Andy grabs his shoulder and spins him around. “Look all we need now is you dying of sepsis because you’re being an outright stubborn arse.”

 Andy grips his wrist and he fights the instinct to pull away. And he thinks he sees Andy hesitate just a smidge, but his heads pounding, his side hurts,  well just about everything hurts and he’s not quite sure how he’s even standing or if the burnt out remains of Newton Haven aren’t a figment of some drug fueled nightmare. And hell it’s just easier to follow Andy. And Andy’s with him and _Andy_ cares. Didn’t leave him when Sam and Steven left.  It’s all most likely a drug fueled hallucination, even so he’ll take it.

It must be the remains of the First Post that Andy pulls him into, though only the outside of it still stands, the wooden interior charred and black, and he can just feel it, knows instinctively where he is in relation to the town.

“Stop pushing. Not a fucking invalid.”

“Prove it then.” 

He strikes out an arm with the intention of catching Andy off-guard. And that backfires when Andy’s hand wraps around his wrist, and he’s pushed rather forcefully back against the remains of a blackened bench.

“You know me so well. Always liked it rough,” he says and then starts into a coughing fit. They’ve both been doing that: hacking on a hundred years of dust and asbestos, and everything else under maintained hamlets expel into the air when set on extraterrestrial  hellfire.

He really doesn’t want to show Andy. Having him see the bandages had been bad enough. It’s some horrible repeat of the incident at Andy’s when they were in school.  And he feels like he falls apart a bit when he gives up his control.  Ah, hell what control does he even have left?  Andy’s seen him at his worst. Reluctantly he shrugs out of his coat and bares his wrists upwards. The bandages are dirtied and around the edges, the gauze peeling. 

Andy sighs and takes his right wrist. It’s gentle. He forgets that Andy can be gentle, and he leans his head back against the bench, closes his eyes. The pressure around his wrist loosens as the gauze is unwrapped.  His head is pounding in time with his heartbeat. And it’s fast and loud in his head, and it’s too much like when he’d done it. When the blood had run sluggish and slow down his wrists, nowhere fast enough for what he needed, and he gasped in frustration at the mechanics of his own body, and the pain that was making his vision fade.  He’d tried with his other wrist, but the fingers of his right hand didn’t quite work right anymore, and he’d made more of mess than he wanted of his left wrist: twisted and jagged - four, five chaotic cuts crossing each other, and the sink was filling with blood, but not fast enough. And goddamn it, he’d botched everything. He’d dropped the knife and went out to stand in the road, blood dripping from his wrists. He’d been meant to die in that car accident all those years ago. That’s right, that’s why. He just needed to set things right. Though of course, he was still here. Even in the drizzly nighttime London fog the car managed to stop - it’s headlights settling against his shins and the driver all wide-eyes and clenched fists yelling at him behind the windscreen. But by that point his vision was going wonky and he leaned heavily against the bonnet and everything after that had been splotchy and undefined.

Andy’s fingers tighten around his palm and Gary opens his eyes, but doesn’t move. Andy’s looking at his mangled left wrist.

“Southpaw, always was a rebel .” Gary says. It’s definitely the wrong thing to say. But he hates how serious Andy looks. 

He kind of just shakes his head and the grip around his wrist tightens. It doesn’t hurt, but shit Andy’s pissed off. He’s going to leave him all over again. He’s nothing more than a disappointment. It’s always too clear in the morning light, he’s too fucking sober, and a heavy barrage of dust motes spin in swirl in the hazy toxic light that falls between them.

“I don’t—how do I?” Andy’s voice falters and something constricts tightly in Gary’s chest, as Andy’s fingers move lightly over the puckered wound - each jab of the wire stark and definite against the paleness of Gary’s arm.

“Why?” And there is it. The question he’s been anticipating and can’t really articulate himself. “What the hell happened? What happened to you?”

 Or what didn’t happen? Gary thinks, phrasing it all wrong, Andy.

“Nothing,” Gary says. And really he doesn’t mean it in the sarcastic cynical way it rolls off his tongue, holding some sort of challenge he hopes Andy will pounce on -will tear into because he doesn’t want the emotions that accompany the other meaning. That it all came to nothing. That his life had stagnated and dried up, and everything he’d dreamed of, all his hopes and determination had been for naught. And he’d lost the one person he might have been able to rely on.  He did think about calling Andy the night he’d tried to kill himself, thought he’d beg some sort of half arsed forgiveness, even held the phone and put it to his ear and pretended he could hear the conversation and how it ultimately ended in Andy rejecting him, despising him, telling to fuck the hell off, and the whole thing had opened some deep chasm inside of him, all other thoughts had tumbled down into that dark jagged blackness.

He’d downed a handful of pills and grabbed the knife in the kitchen.  More fucking determined than he’d been in years to succeed at something.

***

Andy snips the wires with a pair of cutting pliers they found at an abandoned hardware store.  It hurts a bit, but it’s really because he’s let them in too long and Andy with a determined look, mixed with some concern, maybe a bit of disgust pulls them free and drops each small metal half-moon on the tiny table in the kitchen. It’s a beautiful little cottage that’s not too far outside the town limits. Everything is so still and empty now and once the fire and ash settled down it was possible to make out the Milky Way. And Gary’s never seen that before and never really thought he would. There’s a lot of things he didn’t think he’d see again, Andy being one of them, or more this Andy who doesn’t hate him, who has maybe started to forgive him. He wants to be better, he thinks. He wants this second chance more than anything. When he’d left the hospital, crawled out the window of the small room they’d put him up in, he’d thought it would be for one last hurrah, he hadn’t planned to leave Newton Haven ever again. If he was going to die, he’d die in the place that he’d loved and in its way had loved him back, because he had nothing left but his memories of that place and that wasn’t enough to sustain a person, not really.

“There.” Andy says sounding a bit triumphant. There are little pieces of metal strewn about the table, and he puts the pliers down to next them. Andy stares at his wrists, at the pink scars that run the lengths of them, the other smaller vertical cuts almost so faded to be invisible, but a reminder of their past, and Gary pulls them back towards himself, shrugging his long sleeves back down over them and looking at the floor, feeling some sort of rush of shame. But Andy’s already over in the kitchen, returning and sweeping the metal shards into the bin.

“Look at us two, a bunch of homebodies. Who’da thought?” Gary says, rubbing at his arms through his sleeves.

Andy gives a small laugh. “Oh yes, a paragon of domestic bliss, we are.  I don’t think there’s enough paper in the world for me to list the number of things I _didn’t_ think were going to happen to me when I decided to go along with your harebrained scheme to come back here.”  But there’s no real anger in his voice.

“Well, you can’t say it wasn’t interesting at least. Not the humdrum day at the office.”

“No, I certainly can’t say that.”

He sits back at the table and Gary wonders how long this can possibly last. But this time will be different. This is a world now where meaning can be made. A fresh canvas burned and rendered new. And there’s something in him he hasn’t felt in a long time - a hope for the future. A future with Andy by his side and a world in the need of a king. He wonders what would happen if he said it out loud. Andy would roll his eyes, he thinks. But that’s never stopped him before.

“Hey, Andy-” he starts to say. But before he can get it out, Andy leans forward.

“So what’s this next harebrained scheme of yours?” There’s a bit of light in his eyes that Gary hasn’t seen in a long time. How he used to look at him when they were in school.

“Oh Andy, it’s a great one.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. I wasn't sure if I would ever add more to the Sun and Planet series. I've been trying to finish up all my half written stories and I remembered I had this one waiting for an ending. Thanks for reading! And if there's a scenario you'd like to see for The World's End please let me know and I'll write it for you. PM me or write in the comments.


End file.
